Wayne LaPierre

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

This week, here at Right Wing Watch we have been monitoring the Conservative Political Action Conference, the American Conservative Union’s annual summit that has been packed with typical right-wing blustering over taxes, Benghazi, Ronald Reagan, not to mention plenty of good old fashioned anti-government conspiracy theories:

5) Wayne LaPierre’s American Nightmare

NRA head Wayne LaPierre told CPAC attendees yesterday that “political and media elites” have conspired against gun owners and conservatives in general, working to “punish anyone who disagrees.”

“The media's intentional corruption of the truth is an abomination and NRA members will never, and I mean never, submit or surrender to the national media,” he said.

Even though crime rates have been falling steadily since the 1990s, LaPierre described his dark vision of an America in which happy and peaceful neighborhoods have been transformed into places of violence and death filled with “knockout-gamers.”

4) IRS Just As Bad As Deposed Leader Of Ukraine

Plenty of CPAC speakers have mentioned the crisis in Ukraine as a supposed failure of President Obama, but Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch went as far as comparing the Obama administration to the government of overthrown Ukrainian president and Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych.

Andy Kroll of Mother Jonesreports that Fitton told attendees of CPAC’s “IRS Targeting Scandal: Protecting the Voice of the People” panel that Obama’s IRS, which has been falselyaccused of targeting conservative groups, is operating much like how the Yanukovych government violently suppressed anti-government protesters: “People are dying in the streets in Ukraine. People being oppressed by the political regime. That's what the IRS was doing.”

3) Trump’s Immigration Solutions

Donald Trump seems to think Jimmy Carter is dead, and that the US may die too if Congress passes immigration reform. The real estate mogul told CPAC yesterday that immigration reform would mean that America would no longer exist, as immigrants flood into the country, destroy the GOP and “take your job.”

2) Muslim Brotherhood Infiltration of CPAC

Anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney hosted an alternative CPAC event yesterday, prompted in part by worries that the right-wing gathering has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood through Republican activists such as Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan. Gaffney joined other conservatives in denouncing Norquist and Khan as Muslim Brotherhood agents who are advancing “civilization jihad” and undermining America.

Diana West yesterday took to WorldNetDaily to warn CPAC that Norquist and Khan are “a pair of influential men with track records of working with America’s enemies – Islamic organizations the U.S. government has linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and larger world of jihad.” She claimed that they are allied with those who hope “to destroy the United States and transform what is left into an Islamic-ruled land,” and pushed the Muslim Brotherhood “straight into the inner sanctum of the Bush White House.”

There are few regular CPAC speakers who can match the NRA's Wayne LaPierre when it comes to peddling wholesale paranoia and nightmarish visions of the future as he did while speaking today when he warned that neighborhood streets that were once filled with laughter and freedom now sit ominously silent because Americans are in fear for their lives, which is why they are loading up on all the ammunition and weapons they can get.

"In the world that surrounds us," he proclaimed, "there are terrorists, and there are home-invaders, drug cartels, car-jackers, knockout-gamers, and rapers, and haters, and campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse our society that sustains us all."

"Do you trust this government to protect you?" LaPierre asked the crowd, which responded with a resounding "no!"

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre spoke at CPAC today, where he was introduced by a video full of clips of people in the media calling him a radical lunatic before launching into a speech where he repeatedly called everyone else crazy for thinking that his positions and views are crazy.

And he proved how reasonable he is by saying that any effort to create a database of gun owners would either be hacked by the Chinese government, handed over to Mexican government, or used by the American government to confiscate them:

By now everyone has seen NRA head Wayne LaPierre declare that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” while calling for armed guards in every American school. The NRA’s proposed solution to gun violence can be boiled down to even more guns, and the group wants concealed weapons in all public spaces – including churches, schools, bars and airports.

If there’s one place that I would expect to be able to take a concealed gun, it’s to a gun show. That’s why I was struck by the advice doled out by the NRA’s National Firearms Museum on “How to be a Gun Collector.” In the article, authored by NRA museum director Jim Supica, would-be gun collectors are directed to “practice basic gun safety” at gun shows.

Supica starts off with the most basic rule of gun safety, warning against allowing “the muzzle of a gun you're handling to point at other folks.” But then he stumbles badly off-message (from the NRA party line) with some commonsense advice that, were President Obama to say it, would hasten comparisons to Mao and Hitler.

The NRA’s Supica directs gun collectors to “keep your guns tied inoperable” (like this) when attending a gun show, noting that this is a “requirement at the better shows.” And he isn't done.

Supica then directs gun collectors to “never bring a loaded gun into a show,” even if it’s a “legal concealed carry gun.” Furthermore, collectors should never “test chamber a round in a show.” Of course, your typical armed guard or concealed carry enthusiast already has a round in the chamber, but never mind that.

Supica observes that “negligent discharges are very rare at shows.” However, when they do happen they typically involve “a concealed carry gun that was brought in loaded.”

You might be wondering why this namby-pamby Supica character hates the Second Amendment so much or whether the NRA knows it has a gun-hating pinko running its museum. But in their defense, Supica’s article bears this disclaimer: “Opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of NRA or the National Firearms Museum.” Well, that’s a relief. Supica may be an NRA employee and run their museum, but at least his commonsense, life-saving advice can’t be pinned on the NRA.

The takeaway, then, is that guns should be unloaded, tied inoperable and held out in the open at gun shows. But if you’re at a church, school, bar or shopping mall, you should feel free to conceal and carry a loaded gun with a bullet in the chamber. And that is how you practice basic gun safety.

During halftime of Sunday night’s NFL football game, NBC sportscaster Bob Costas weighed in on the recent murder-suicide carried out by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, noting that the prevalence of guns in our culture is making such tragedies more common.

This commentary has, predictably, outraged the Right, most notably NRA President Wayne LaPierre, who appeared on Glenn Beck's television program to frantically warn that "the media in this country hates the Second Amendment rights of American citizens and they'll do anything to try and take that freedom away from average citizens" by teaming up with the Obama Administration to carry out a wholesale "siege on the Second Amendment in this country like we've never seen before":

Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association uncovered a "massive Obama conspiracy" during his remarks at CPAC, explaining that the administration hasn't done anything on gun rights in the first term intentionally in order to lull gun owners in a false sense of security and keep them from voting so that he can win a second term and finally "destroy the Second Amendment":

On a semi-similar note, Larry Klayman owes Judicial Watch nearly $70,000. Plus, in his new book he says the "vast right wing conspiracy" to take down President Clinton was started by himself, Phyllis Schlafly Paul Weyrich, and Wayne LaPierre during a Council for National Policy conference in 1998.

Slog: Focus on the Family Affiliate Donates $200,000 to Washington's Reject R-71.

AMERICAblog: Catholic group wants No on 1's newest ad off the air because a Catholic mother wants her son to be equal.

Back in 2001, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre traveled to Lynchburg, Virginia where he appeared on Jerry Falwell's television program and presented him with a lifetime membership to the National Rifle Association.

So presumably the decision by Liberty University’s board of trustees not to allow students to carry concealed weapons on campus won’t sit well with them, considering that the NRA brags that it “has been at the forefront in securing the rights of law-abiding Americans to carry concealed handguns for personal protection.”

Board members, at Liberty for a regularly scheduled meeting, decided to continue to not allow people with concealed handgun permits to carry weapons on campus.

Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. had brought the matter before the board after members of Liberty’s chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus requested a change in policy.

“The feeling was that, unlike most private property owners, we have our own police force,” Falwell said after the meeting. “So the decision was made, since crime has not really been a problem at LU, not to make any changes to the policy at this time.

“The board did express a willingness to look at, especially faculty and staff being allowed to carry concealed weapons in the future, should they determine that it was needed for enhanced security.”

Currently, the university does not allow those with concealed weapons permits to carry a gun on campus.

…

Falwell said the board considered both that perspective and opinions from other students and faculty.

“We’ve received a lot of feedback, and I’d say the majority of the community probably does not support (concealed carry on campus),” Falwell said. “The ones who do support it are very, very committed. And the ones who are against it feel just as strongly.”

He said those against allowing concealed carry “probably outnumber those who do two-to-one.”

“Some of the faculty had commented that they couldn’t imagine anything worse than students packing heat while they were handing out grades,” Falwell said.

Presumably, had this sort of decision been reached by some “liberal” university, the Right would be up in arms and blasting the school for violating the precious second-amendment rights of its students … but since it happened at Liberty, nobody seems to be saying anything at all.

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre tells the CPAC audience that the 2nd Amendment is the foundation of all of our freedoms and that all rights and freedoms are nothing but "stains on a rotten piece of parchment paper in a museum somewhere" until they are "guarded by the blued steel and dry powder of a free and armed people."

He also proclaims that he knows it is not politically correct to say so, but he doesn't care "if their butts pucker from here to the Potomac, the Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules":

FOX NEWS HAS LEARNED that in New Orleans on Friday John McCain makes a major speech to the influential and little known Council for National Policy. The CNP is an umbrella organization of influential social and religious conservative groups.

The council was founded in 1981, just as the modern conservative movement began its ascendance. The Rev. Tim LaHaye, an early Christian conservative organizer and the best-selling author of the ''Left Behind'' novels about an apocalyptic Second Coming, was a founder. His partners included Paul Weyrich, another Christian conservative political organizer who also helped found the Heritage Foundation.

They said at the time that they were seeking to create a Christian conservative alternative to what they believed was the liberalism of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Back when it first formed, the CNP was linked to the Iran-Contra scandal though, most recently, it generated media attention after many of its members threatened to bolt the GOP if Rudy Giuliani won the nomination. Despite the organization’s penchant for secrecy, they are perhaps best known as being the organization George W. Bush addressed back in 1999 where he reportedly promised to appoint only anti-abortion-rights judges to the Supreme Court and then both he and the CNP refused to release the audio tape of his remarks.

Fox News reports that, unlike Bush’s address, McCain’s will be released but that remains to be seen, since the CNP has never been particularly interested in openness or transparency:

Three times a year for 23 years, a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country have met behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference, the Council for National Policy, to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.

Details are closely guarded.

''The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before of after a meeting,'' a list of rules obtained by The New York Times advises the attendees.

The membership list is ''strictly confidential.'' Guests may attend ''only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee.'' In e-mail messages to one another, members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name, to protect against leaks.

…

The secrecy that surrounds the meeting and attendees like the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly and the head of the National Rifle Association, among others, makes it a subject of suspicion, at least in the minds of the few liberals aware of it.

…

The membership list this year was a who's who of evangelical Protestant conservatives and their allies, including Dr. Dobson, Mr. Weyrich, Holland H. Coors of the beer dynasty; Wayne LaPierre of the National Riffle Association, Richard A. Viguerie of American Target Advertising, Mark Mix of the National Right to Work Committee and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.

While there is no mention of McCain’s appearance before the group on his schedule or website, it seems that the McCain camp realized that sneaking off to woo the Right might undermine his reputation as a straight-talkin’ maverick and decided to clue the press in ahead of time in an effort to avoid the sort of controversy that plagued Bush back in 2000:

CNP does not publicize its meetings, speakers or agenda, but the McCain campaign informed the press of his agreement to address the council. As a result, reporters following the McCain campaign deluged the council with requests for coverage.

"We agreed the press could sit in a separate room and listen to the speech and the questions and answers," a CNP official said, speaking anonymously because the rules of the council forbid officials or members to speak by name in public.

While yesterday’s segment at CPAC devoted to judicial nominees – featuring Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), who can count few fans at the event – was sparsely attended, even fewer showed up for today’s panel discussion on “judicial activism” instead of joining the crowds for Mike Huckabee and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA down the hall. Still, Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, and a man named Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation did their best to keep the attention of the handful of conference-goers on the subject that was one of the most vigorously touted at last year’s CPAC.

The enemies remained the same: judges who “legislate from the bench” and believe in a “living Constitution” which they “write … at will,” and senators who opposed some of Bush’s extreme nominations or who participated in the “Gang of 14” deal that halted the march toward the “nuclear option,” which would have forced through a rule change eliminating filibusters on those nominations. Fitton said of the filibustered nominees that “liberals thought they were too conservative, and yes, too Christian.” LaRue described as “undermedicated” and “psychotic” Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with groups like People For the American Way that opposed confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

The judicial heroes were also familiar: Roberts and Alito, whose successful appointment LaRue called the “biggest grassroots victory” in years; Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Fitton described as a model for “humble judges” who “restrain themselves.” In addition, Kreep singled out Janice Rogers Brown, perhaps the most radical of Bush’s appellate nominees, for her success in getting on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. According to Kreep, Brown was targeted because of her race by the Democratic Party, “one of the most racist” groups in country, which he said opposes any minority who doesn’t “kiss their tuckuses” and “say ‘yessa massa.’”

Wayne LaPierre Posts Archive

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
This week, here at Right Wing Watch we have been monitoring the Conservative Political Action Conference, the American Conservative Union’s annual summit that has been packed with typical right-wing blustering over taxes, Benghazi, Ronald Reagan, not to mention plenty of good old fashioned anti-government conspiracy theories:
5) Wayne LaPierre’s American Nightmare
NRA head Wayne LaPierre told CPAC attendees yesterday that “political and media elites... MORE >

There are few regular CPAC speakers who can match the NRA's Wayne LaPierre when it comes to peddling wholesale paranoia and nightmarish visions of the future as he did while speaking today when he warned that neighborhood streets that were once filled with laughter and freedom now sit ominously silent because Americans are in fear for their lives, which is why they are loading up on all the ammunition and weapons they can get.
"In the world that surrounds us," he proclaimed, "there are terrorists, and there are home-invaders, drug cartels, car-jackers, knockout-gamers, and... MORE >

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre spoke at CPAC today, where he was introduced by a video full of clips of people in the media calling him a radical lunatic before launching into a speech where he repeatedly called everyone else crazy for thinking that his positions and views are crazy.
And he proved how reasonable he is by saying that any effort to create a database of gun owners would either be hacked by the Chinese government, handed over to Mexican government, or used by the American government to confiscate them:
MORE >

By now everyone has seen NRA head Wayne LaPierre declare that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” while calling for armed guards in every American school. The NRA’s proposed solution to gun violence can be boiled down to even more guns, and the group wants concealed weapons in all public spaces – including churches, schools, bars and airports.
If there’s one place that I would expect to be able to take a concealed gun, it’s to a gun show. That’s why I was struck by the advice doled out by the NRA’s National... MORE >

During halftime of Sunday night’s NFL football game, NBC sportscaster Bob Costas weighed in on the recent murder-suicide carried out by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, noting that the prevalence of guns in our culture is making such tragedies more common.
This commentary has, predictably, outraged the Right, most notably NRA President Wayne LaPierre, who appeared on Glenn Beck's television program to frantically warn that "the media in this country hates the Second Amendment rights of American citizens and they'll do anything to try and take that freedom away from... MORE >

Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association uncovered a "massive Obama conspiracy" during his remarks at CPAC, explaining that the administration hasn't done anything on gun rights in the first term intentionally in order to lull gun owners in a false sense of security and keep them from voting so that he can win a second term and finally "destroy the Second Amendment":
MORE >